Sermon On Mark 6:1-13: ‘Jesus: Home And Away’

I’ve been unable to upload my sermon for tomorrow to my usual site, so until I can get things resolved with technical support I am posting it here. The layout has gone a bit funny as I’ve transferred HTML code, but it’s late at night and I don’t have time to fix everything now.

You can read the Bible passage on which the sermon is based here.

Introduction
Isadore Irandir was the goalkeeper for Brazilian football team Rio Petro in the 1970s. He was a devout Christian, and prayed at the beginning of each match. One day his team faced the famous Brazilian side Corinthians, whose star player was Roberto Rivelino. Corinthians kicked off. The
ball was passed to Rivelino. Noticing that Irandir was still on his knees, praying, he shot from the half way line – and scored, just three seconds into the game.
[Adapted from Simon Coupland, Spicing Up Your Speaking, p249 #243.]

I tell you that story today, the day of the World Cup Final, because I realise you haven’t heard enough about football in the last month. The Sun’s childish headline ‘There Is A God’, when Wayne Rooney
was getting back to fitness, now looks even more pathetic.

But this is not a sermon in which I make analogies about an English football side filled with individuals who can’t play together as a team – although that would make a useful analogy for many
churches. It is to say, however, that I have chosen a football metaphor to frame
this sermon.

And it’s this. Usually a football team does better when it plays at ‘home’ than it does when ‘away’. At home, in front of your own supporters, you generally win more matches. And in this passage from Mark’s Gospel Jesus is playing both at home and away. Firstly he is on his home ground for a fixture at his local synagogue. Then he is away, teaching in other villages and commissioning his followers to help him spread the Gospel of the Kingdom.

But – does Jesus do better at home or away? And what do the results tell us about discipleship in God’s Kingdom?

1. Home
He’s the local boy made good, the local hero. The lad from Nazareth is garnering quite a reputation. Now he’s returning home. Surely it will be standing room only and accolades for the man who teaches like no-one else and who heals and casts out demons. This should be a home banker.

Not exactly. It seems to start well. They are astounded. The locals say,

‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!’

[verse 2]

But behind those words, ‘Where did this man get all this?’ is not wonder and praise but cynicism. For verse 3 continues,

<!– +fOther ancient authorities read son of the carpenter and of Mary+e –><!– +fOr stumbled+e –>‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him.

They know him. He can’t be anyone special. He’s just a carpenter. Carpenters don’t do this sort of thing. He’s just a common worker like the rest of us [cf. William L Lane, The Gospel Of Mark,
p202.].

And in that designation ‘the son of Mary’ is a Jewish derogatory statement. You only described a man as the son of his mother when you were reaching for terms of insult [ibid., p203].

So the people who have known Jesus since boyhood have little more than contempt for him. They cannot see beyond their own narrow horizons to embrace him as a prophet, let alone the Messiah and the Son of God. They dismiss him. Without openness to him even Jesus cannot exercise the power of the Spirit. It’s not a home win, is it? It’s a home defeat. It’s like the opposing team marking the star player out of the game.

Perhaps this is something that faces us as we share in God’s mission today. While there is an incredible ignorance of Jesus and the Gospel in our society, many people who reject Christianity do so thinking they know what they are rejecting. This society sees itself as post-Christian, not pre-Christian. It is our task to set before the world Jesus as he truly is, in all his blazing glory. At the same time we may face the same level of scorn and rejection that Jesus himself faced. But that must not mean we stop witnessing to Jesus in word and deed.

But for us to witness to Jesus in the world means facing some challenging thoughts fin this story for those of us in church life. We are the people who like to think we know Jesus well. Yet maybe
familiarity has bred contempt for us. Maybe we’re so used to the same old sayings, creeds and formulae being trotted out about Jesus that it is altogether too well-known and it loses its power. Maybe the routine and regularity of church life have dulled our vision from vivid Technicolor to sepia or black and white. We think we know him.

Indeed we think we know him so much that we have domesticated him into an obedient pet who will do what we tell him. There’s something altogether the wrong way round there. And as C S Lewis wrote in Narnia Chronicles, ‘Aslan is not a tame lion.’ Jesus is what the musician T-Bone Burnett called ‘The wild truth’.

And we’ve become so accustomed to the ordinariness of church life that any breakout from it must be contained. Is it so surprising, then, if our churches can be drab and dreary – not necessarily in the decor of the buildings but the demeanour of the people? Is it that startling to notice that Jesus is not working many miracles among us, too? Mind you, we’d probably be satisfied with him laying hands on a few sick people and curing them [verse 5].

Could it be that Jesus is amazed at our unbelief, just as he was in Nazareth [verse 6]? What kind of belief is required? We’ll explore that more in the second point, where Jesus has an ‘away fixture’, because there we see something quite different from the ‘match’ at Nazareth. In fact, the suffocating unbelief in the synagogue is the very thing that leads to Jesus’ mission to the villages in the second half of the reading. Unless we heed the warning about unbelief in him it could be that he will move on from us to somewhere that is more receptive than we are.

2. Away
So to the ‘away fixture’. And if Jesus hasn’t scored a victory at home, what chance is there for him away? Is he relegation material?

Far from it. Away from home, away from unbelief, Jesus and his disciples find it easier to score goals and win the game. In contrast to the result at Nazareth that ‘he could do no deed of power
there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them’ [verse 5] the result in the villages of the Twelve’s mission is that ‘They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.’ [verse 13]. It isn’t that everything will be smooth, because Jesus says some villages will reject the message and so the Twelve should wipe the dust off their feet
against them [verse 11] as a prophetic sign of dissociation from its moral pollution and warning of judgement to make them ponder.

But nevertheless there is a radical difference. So what has produced the difference? Perhaps most importantly for us, how is faith being exercised here in contrast to the unbelief prevalent in the Nazareth synagogue?

Well, we don’t know anything directly about those who responded to the teaching of Jesus and the message of the Twelve. We can probably assume by contrast to the pious people at Nazareth that they did not display the short-sighted unbelief that hampered them. Instead of being restricted by past experience and assumptions they were open to what God wanted to do through Jesus and his messengers.

But what we do know a little more about is the way in which Jesus sent his twelve followers out to share in his mission. They, too, demonstrate active faith.

Their faith becomes immediately apparent by responding to the terms Jesus sets for them as they go out. They have to depend entirely on local hospitality – no bread, no beggar’s bag and not even the most worthless copper coin in their belts. Nor could they take a second tunic that would have been needed to guard against the night chill if they had had to sleep outside in the open air. [ibid., p207f.]

This was a definite act of faith that they would find hospitality – although it has to be said that giving hospitality was characteristic of the culture.  Nevertheless their message risked a negative approach and so they could have been flung out of a village. So on balance this is an act of trust. It is going out on a limb, on the basis that Jesus has spoken, and trusting God to meet needs.

It may be that living-on-the-edge kind of faith that we are being called to. It may be the lack of it in our churches that makes us dull rather than exciting places. Jesus may or may not lay similar requirements upon us to those he laid upon the Twelve, but he certainly will call us in some ways to take risky action based on his word to us. I’m not saying we sit and think of something extreme and then do it – that would be like the temptation in the wilderness for Jesus to throw himself down from the top of the Temple. But I am saying that Jesus wants to challenge us to do things outside our comfort zone and when we trust him enough to do them he will do wonderful things as a result.

Simple and daring faith is combined with courageous witness. They know that the message of Jesus is not of the ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ variety. They know that his message from the beginning has been one that says, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near, so repent and believe the good news [Mark 1:15]. So it is not surprising that their message is to ‘[proclaim] that all should repent’ [verse 12]. Living faith in Jesus knows there will be areas where his message comes into conflict with everyday life as we know it. To meet Jesus is to know the need to change. It is no good thinking we can just tweak the Gospel to suit the moral fashions of the day.

To proclaim the Gospel is to know what the Catholic author G K Chesterton knew when once he wrote a letter to The Times, which said:

Dear Sir,

What is wrong with the world?

I am.

Yours faithfully,

G K Chesterton.

Finally, active faith and courageous witness are combined with compassionate use of spiritual power:

They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured
them.
[verse 13]

Simple, authoritative prayer to cast out evil. Anointing with oil – which was thought to be medicine in the ancient world – but this is no quackery, the sick people are cured, so we may presume prayer is
involved, too.

For us comes the simple challenge to meet human needs and alleviate pain in the name of Jesus Christ – not only by the efforts of relief agencies, but also personally and taking all action on a foundation of prayer.

Now I am not denying that we pray for people – and we shall do so in the intercessions in a moment or two – but perhaps we are being called to be more daring. To say to people, I will pray for you. To offer to pray for them in their presence, if they would like it.

And I am not condemning, either, when we give money to relief organisations. But might not a vibrant church also ask what small projects it could begin in the locality to serve the needy?

Conclusion
In 1981 I went with a few other Christians from my home circuit to the north of Norway for a nine-day mission. There we were joined by some other Methodists from Strasbourg. It was under a programme of the European Methodist Youth Council (apparently, I was still a youth in 1981). The theory behind the programme was that it was best to get your first taste of mission away from home soil, where you might find it more difficult to speak about your faith.

Well certainly in this story from Mark’s Gospel there is greater fruitfulness for Jesus’ message ‘away’ rather than at home, but it is not due to a lack of courage on his part. It is all down to a model of true, living faith.

We have two choices. We can be the unbelieving people of short-sighted vision in the synagogue at Nazareth. If so, we shall reject Jesus and his presence will be gone from us.

Or we can show the daring faith of the Twelve out on mission in the villages. Daring faith, courageous witness and the compassionate use of spiritual power.

Does that sound like a model for mission?

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